The Caucasian Party is simply an anti-tax party. The rest is just window dressing!
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When I say they want us to shop around, I mean they want us to shop around for providers, not for insurers. The Exchanges were set up so we could âshopâ for insurers. That is actually easier than shopping for providers.
A piece of anecdata might clarify this:
At a physical exam recently, my internist felt a lump in my scrotum. She said, âI feel something here, Iâm pretty sure itâs a varicocele or a cyst but I want to be sure itâs not a tumor. Iâm going to order an ultrasound. Itâs not urgent.â
Itâs not urgent but I want to know itâs not tumor â worrisome words. But my insurer subscribes to a âshopping serviceâ for health care. I got on the servicesâ website and âshoppedâ for a testicular ultrasound. I picked a low-cost provider in my network with good patient satisfaction and had it done. (If you care, the verdict was âItâs not a tumor.â)
Then the bill came in. The price the shopping service quoted me ($80) was wrong. The ultrasound actually cost me $250. The price quoted by the shopping service didnât include the radiologistâs opinion. That was another $250 and the radiologist was out-of-network. The shopping service didnât warn me about that little fillip. Finally, none of it is integrated into the EMR (Electronic Medical Record) in my internistâs practice. You canât effectively shop for this stuff even when itâs a non-emergent situation.
A year later, when my internist wanted another ultrasound done (different problem) I just went to the imaging lab in the group practice. If you canât shop for this crap, you might as well have it in the EMR so everybody who needs to see it can see it. It ended up costing less overall than getting my nuts scanned the year before.
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Generally, a plan starts with what the object is. Everyone knows what the objective of Obamacare was/is, whether it fully meets it or not. The Republican objective is simply to end taxes that pay for it, and keep some remnant around for a few years so they have something to fundraise on.
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As the lawyers ask, Cui bono?
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âDEATH PANELâ
Paul Ryan, Chairman
We will remember you PAUL and cursed will be YOUR NAME!
Ask George W. BushâŚHOW IT FEELS to be remembered.
WHAT youâre trying to do IS WRONG and YOU KNOW IT!
DEATH PANELPOSTER CHILD
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Friend of mine just had relatively minor outpatient shoulder surgery - total charges including facility and doctor fees exceeded $80,000.
I remember reading a Readerâs Digest article in the 70âs that was talking about the shock of an average day in an ICU in a hospital costing almost $1000. Average charges for an ICU bed alone now exceed 10,000 - once you add in professional, pharmacy, lab, radiology and equipment fees, the charges frequently shoot up over $20,000. If you have serious chronic illness like kidney failure, your costs will exceed $100,000 per year for just the dialysis.
Trauma and burn patients can be almost beyond belief - I case managed a serious burn patient whose costs exceeded $1 million in a week due to the extensive grafting that was required.
Pharmaceutical costs in the hospital are routinely marked up from already tremendously over-inflated prices by 500-1000% - that is not a typo. Hospitals frequently charge 10 times the actual cost of the drug.
We are way past the time for universal single payer healthcare. Time for an insurrection.
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The GOP are like squatters who destroy a place while they party in it. The Democrats are like the clean-up crew who come in the next morning. They do the drudge work.
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Or better yet, just call it by its real name, PPACA!
And get blamed for the mess and get kneecapped by Republicans from trying to adequately clean up their mess. sigh
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Even worse was rescission, wherein an insurance company faced with a policyholder newly diagnosed with an expensive condition would comb through their medical records to find some discrepancy with their application. Finding one they could, under the terms of the policy, rescind their coverage. It didnât matter how minor the omission or error. ACA explicitly forbids this practice.
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Anyone beyond the age of 17 who thinks Ayn Rand is a great intellect or has anything to offer philosophically does not have the intellectual capacity to grasp the realities of healthcare. I am not sure that Ryan actually even thinks in terms of wrong or right with his simple minded proposals, but among Republicans he is considered a real thinker and a wonk on this stuff.
âNever attribute to malice, that which can be reasonably explained by stupidity.â - Spider Robinson
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Is it wrong of me to wish a multi-million-dollar out-of-pocket catastrophic illness on Paul Ryan or one of his family members? Iâm not ordinarily the kind of person who wishes bad fortune on anyone, even my worst enemies, but I am just incensed by the callous willingness to inflict pain and suffering on others. How about if I add to my wish that the afflicted person recovers his or her health fully, but that the Ryan family is left with medical bills that perpetually reduce their standard of living to just above the poverty line? Paul Ryan, meet Real America.
Itâs not. Itâs worse. Which is why the GOP likes it.
Paul Ryanâs favorite Obamacare talking point, debunked
There was a slight drop in the proportion of younger enrollees: Of the people buying insurance on the exchanges, 26 percent were between the ages of 18 and 34, down from last yearâs figure of 28 percent. Both figures are far below the Obama administrationâs original goal of 40 percentâan overestimate that explains, in part, why premiums have risen so much in the first place.
Without healthy cheap enrollees the whole thing falls apart. Premiums, copays, and deductibles all fall when we all participate.
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Completely agree on Ayn Rand. Whenever she comes up, I like to link to this takedown by the brilliant sci-fi author John Scalzi:
John Scalzi on Atlas Shrugged
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Healthcare? Healthcare is the least of it. Ayn Rand wrote economic pornography that feeds the egos of idiots.
John Donne told us not to send to ask for whom the bell tolls, because the loss of one person diminishes us all. Richard Byrd (Alone) told us about the dangers of isolation. Study after study have shown us that people with strong social networks are the happiest people.
President Obama worded it unartfully when he said, âYou didnât build that!â Thatâs uncharacteristic of him â âYou didnât build that alone.â Newton meant a slam at Robert Hooke when he wrote, âIf I have seen further than others, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants.â However, we can rightly ignore the slam at Hooke and note that Newton (and Einstein, for that matter) was able to do what he did because he inherited tools developed by his predecessors. It doesnât diminish his accomplishments to acknowledge that.
If we want a strong nation, we need strong social networks. Social Darwinism is not the way to develop them.
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Quoted for truth.
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Back in 2009, it was discovered that Wellpoint, one of the nationâs largest health insurers, was routinely sending the records of every customer of theirs who had a breast cancer diagnosis to the companyâs fraud department. This was done so that they could go over the patientâs records with a fine toothed comb in order to find something, anything, to allow them to drop the customer due to a previously âundisclosedâ pre-existing condition.
That abhorrent practice will likely be welcomed back with open arms by our caring Republican legislators.
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Canât get this song out of my head
No one knows what itâs like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
No one knows what itâs like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies
But my dreams
They arenât as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
Thatâs never free
apologies to Peter Townsend
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True enough but the problem with anything to do with Paul Ryan on every subject, is money.
Way too much for billionaires and not nearly enough for the rest of us. Every. Single. Time.
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